Reading the Emotes
by Drinking Acid
Summary: Emotions are very hard things to explain. Often, they're complicated and muddled, so that you can't really tell one from the other. Sometimes they aren't even real. Oneshot. Shikamaru's POV


**Title:** _Reading the_ _Emotes_

**Pairings:** _none_

**Warnings:** _none_

**Author:** _Drinking Acid_

**Disclaimer:**_ I don't own Naruto_

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Emotion: _n. _**1.** a strong feeling, such as joy or anger. **2.** instinctive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge.

Emotional: _adj._ **1.** relating to the emotions. **2.** arousing or showing emotion. **3. **easily affected by or readily displaying emotion

Emotionless: _adj. _unsusceptible to, destitute of, or showing no emotion.

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Emotions are very difficult to explain.

Sure, they can be defined in the sense of words like "happy" or "sad" or "angry", but these are all very basic feelings, the type of things that just about any even _slightly_ complex creature could feel.

No, _real_ emotions run much deeper than that.

Most people preferred to claim they were emotionless. They say this with much smugness or superiority, sometimes even boredom, though their voice quivers, if only for a fraction of a second, and it totally defies what they assume as true. Because to change the tone of your voice, even just a little, means you have emotion. It means you can _feel_ and _hurt_ and_ hate _and _cry_ when everything becomes too much to bear or when you need to let everything out or else you'll explode.

Neji and Sasuke think they're emotionless because they put up walls so as to block out unwanted feelings. They lock themselves into their own mind, hiding themselves away from their emotions so that they never realize what they truly want until it's taken away from them, until it's too late. They think they're saving themselves from heartbreak by doing this, but all they're really doing is digging their own grave, burying themselves deeper and deeper in denial until the walls cave in. They're killing themselves. In truth, they aren't emotionless in the slightest; they're just too dense to recognize their own feelings.

Other people, like Gaara and Shino, are simply incapable of expressing their emotions. It's not that they can't feel anything —oh no, they feel a LOT— but they can't find the words or facial expressions to explain it, and thus they appear blank and vague. This emptiness makes them more frightening and strange than they are, because no one can tell what they're thinking and so they can't predict their next move, leaving them at a loss as to what to do around them. As they stutter and stumble to try and communicate, they get fed up with a lack of response and turn away in ignorance. But they don't realize that these blank-faced people are feeling a multitude of things —a turbulent of emotions that could drown a lesser person— and they just can't find an outlet for them all, having had no experience with it before, so they do what they've always done: bottled it up and retained a concrete mask.

But then there are people like Lee and Sakura who appear to feel _too_ much. They are vibrant and wild, full of energy or passion, ready and willing to show every scrap of emotion in them. These people smile when they're happy, cry when they're sad, and aren't afraid to punch you in the mouth when they're mad. Everything is shoved forward for the world to see, striving for appreciation and attention, begging to be seen by anybody who happened to look their way. No matter what feelings flutter through them, they express it in full force without any qualms, thinking this is the best way to handle things, the best way to stay sane.

People like Naruto and Chouji, though, appear normal, healthy people at first glance. Maybe they're a bit energetic or eat too much, and they may be a little too quick to laugh, but still normal enough all the same. Except they aren't. All those emotions displayed on their faces for everyone to read are forced or practiced, manufactured at home in front of the mirror with the bathroom door locked. They're fake. They keep their thoughts and feelings tucked away in their mind, away from prying eyes, terrified stiff of what might happen if someone were to actually see their real thoughts, their real feelings, because they're _afraid_. More than anything, they're fearful of the rejection they feel positive they'll receive, should they be thrown under the microscope and examined. This fear is insanely common and so easy to find if one were to look close enough.

However, people _don't_ look close enough. They read the headlines and skip the fine print, thinking "what's the harm?" In reality, this is very dangerous to one's emotional health, because to ignore someone's mind is to ignore that person as a whole.

Shikamaru knows better, though. He knows where to look, what to look for, and how to interpret what he sees accurately. As he watches the others interact, watches them talk and laugh and argue, he sees what they don't, all the hidden codes in their movements.

He sees Kiba, Naruto, Lee and Sakura playing, joking and laughing, and the small jerk of Naruto's hand as Kiba get's just a little too close and the way Lee's face is just a tad too happy, as if he were struggling to fully explain his thoughts as he talked at the top of his voice. He sees Sasuke seated up in the tree, too cool to participate, but his eyes watching Naruto like a hawk, his muscles tense with the want to join his teammates. Chouji sits to Shikamaru's right, smiling and eating as he tries not to feel too out of place amongst people he feels are so much better than him, and Shino is standing off to the side, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses as he battles with himself to find some way of sharing the fun so obviously displayed throughout the training field.

Everything one needed to know about someone was hidden in plain sight, open for your viewing should you know which page to turn to. One could spend a second or two looking at the title page or the Table of Contents and feel confident they know the person before them, or they could read the whole book, front to back, and come away wishing they had never met the person at all. It was best, for sanity's sake, to take it one page at a time, reading them a bit deeper with every meeting, but not too much.

—_It could be dangerous to touch one's past_.—

So the best thing to do would be to simply read one chapter of a person at a time, gaining more knowledge of them as time passed, and slowly but surely learning them inside and out.

However, not everyone's book was nice and fresh and neat; some people's books were full of yellowing, torn pages where the words are so faded and dirty that you can't see them clearly at first. They make you squint and stare at them for several minutes before you understand them and by then, the book would've shut itself, aware it was being read, and you'd be left with a puzzling, confusing jumble of words that didn't make any sense until you read the next sentence when you saw them again.

And it wasn't as if everyone's book stayed the same. As the person grew and developed, experiencing hardships and emotional turmoil, they change in their morals and in their actions, rewriting their book so that the next time you returned to their pages, you find yourself somewhere completely different and you wonder if maybe you pulled the wrong book off the shelf. But you didn't; the person has simply rewritten themselves and now you had to start all over from the beginning, struggling to understand the mystery that might have once been your best friend.

But Shikamaru had all the time in the world. He could watch these people forever, learning and relearning everything about them, over and over, and he wouldn't have had any difficulties in doing so. The only problem was that he didn't really _care_ for people-reading. They were far too troublesome to keep track of as a group, and the only people he really had to keep an eye on were his best friend Chouji and the nine-tailed fox holder Naruto. There was no point in studying everyone else.

Besides; when one starts to sink too far in the lives of others, they tend to delve deeper into their own psyche, examining themselves with the knowledge gained from others. And Shikamaru didn't like looking too closely at himself, because in all honesty, he was a bit afraid.

_Afraid of what he would find_.

So he'd just lay back down and focus on the wispy puffs of cloud above him, letting his mind go blank as the shouts around him dimmed. And it was with a start he realized why people were so dense about reading people, about looking into a person so deeply so as to analyze every aspect of them down to why they put their left shoe on before their right shoe. It was rather obvious, actually, and he felt like kicking himself for not realizing it earlier.

They were afraid, too.

Afraid of what was buried beneath the surface of themselves. And so they only looked at the cover of the book, because that's as far as the wanted to look at themselves.

Humans really _were_ so very dense.

Because no one could run from _themself_. They just ended up running themselves ragged in an never-ending loop, fleeing from their own shadow so that if they should ever stop, they'd find themselves overtaken. And when they turned around to face their fears, they only saw their own reflection, looking back at them, before they started to run again, afraid. Always afraid.

But at least they aren't emotionless. That's got to be worth _something_.

Doesn't it?

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_**End**_


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